Sunday 28 January 2018

How (not) To Write A Series - A Pantser's Guide

How not to plan


Definitely, at all costs, avoid the planning. With this one simple tip, a writer can avoid months or even years of worry, save themselves from the dreaded note cascade whenever the cat crosses the desk, and, best of all, begin writing sooner.

As award-winning authors Claire Buss and J C Steel can attest, it is hard to over-emphasise the savings in time spent not writing your next masterpiece this one piece of advice can provide. Please note, when we say ‘don’t plan’, we do indeed mean no series arc, no tedious deciding in advance whether your protagonist should have a mole somewhere interesting, and most certainly no poring over a map trying to figure out why cities that famous people are born in exist at the top of mountain plateaux with no nearby water.

Complicated things like these tend to take care of themselves. You had no plan for book one and everything worked out just fine. Repeat this method when writing subsequent books and in no time at all, you'll have a multi-book series and maybe even a box set. Planning takes up valuable time when you could be inventing twenty new characters who bear no relation whatsoever to the main characters in your first book. It's important to keep things fresh and interesting.


Planning is one of the secret tools of procrastination. Authors who swear by it are really admitting to being closet-procrastinators and they probably don't even like cake.  

How not to world-build


J C Steel maintains that it’s possible to learn everything you need to know about your characters and your world-building by climbing a mast, wedging yourself comfortably above the radar, and chatting with the voices in your head. Not only does it pass the time when the yacht isn’t going anywhere, but when you do this regularly, the character, the secondary characters, and the world they live in becoming so internalised that the entire setting and cast is ready for you when you reach deck level and reach for your pen (or keyboard, or magic wand, or inscription instrument of choice). Better yet, again, no notes required.

Health and safety tip: Of course, for the younger writer, it is important not to confess to anyone that you are, in fact, chatting with the voices in your head until you reach the local age of indiscretion. Otherwise, adults (defined as those who have been doing it wrong longer) have a tendency to over-react.

There is no need to re-read your previous book(s) and re-familiarise yourself with the existing world you built. After all, you wrote it in the first place and you never forget salient details, ever. By continuing to have regular chats with your characters you will have an in-depth understanding of their personality and why they react to things the way they do. Seeing as you have all this information at your fingertips it will become obvious to the reader as well, this is down to secret osmosis of thought. That elusive yet unique connection authors have with their readers which allows them, the reader, to understand every nuance, every subtlety and every hidden meaning. That connection is so strong there is no need to describe buildings, cities, infrastructure or even what your characters look like. All those world-building aspects come under planning and as stated previously, there is no need to get bogged down by any of that.

How to not delay the writing bits


So how does one get from chatting with the voices in your head to successfully writing a series? You may well ask. We feel that the key ingredient for this harks back to our very first piece of advice - don't plan - freeing up more time for actual writing. Bum on seat and fingers on writing implements is how the words are made to go. A pantser is, therefore, always at a near-infinite advantage. While the plotter is still working out whether using shell pink Post-It notes for the kinky scenes is too precious, the pantser has already powered through that all-important opening scene and is trying busily to get their characters to slow that duck down so they can write down the awesome one-liner someone yelled halfway through the last chase.

There is no need to worry about subsequent books making sense with regards to the entire series or indeed as stand-alone novels. Readers will, of course, read each book in the series in the correct order and will have already established their psychic link with your inner monologue and completely understand all the backstory you've thought about and not yet written down. This means, again, the pantser wins at writing as they do not have to delay getting on with the actual writing.

Health and safety tip: We refer you to the great Oscar Wilde on the importance of making time for what is most important to you -“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

How not to get buried in the details


Detailed descriptions are so last century. Your enlightened reader just wants the juicy bits, never mind sixteen pages detailing the lavish surroundings your average planner has constructed. Which by the way, took them two weeks to thrash out while you, the pantser, released four novellas.

It’s absolutely true, the Devil’s in the details. In case no one has ever imparted to you the key to lying successfully (and what is fiction writing, if not the art of lying to better convey meaning?), it is Keep It Simple, Stupid – also known in professional circles as the KISS and tell principle. By avoiding the wall covered in sticky notes, and the ensuing panic whenever the air, the cat, the offspring, or the summoned entity moves through the room, we have also successfully avoided not one, but two story-killers; the smothering alive of the story pacing in irrelevant detail, and the trapping yourself in a plot web of such intricacy that the temptation to disprove the old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword is put to extreme test.

How not to listen to advice on how to write



Last but not least (by far not least) it is vitally important to ignore other people telling you how you should write. What works for them is highly unlikely to work for you, and as we’re looking at not just a flash fiction piece, a novella, or a single book, but the writing of an entire series...it is extremely important to settle on a method that works for you over weeks, months, years, and even more importantly, a method that doesn’t get in the way of your writing, but which facilitates it. So planners - plan to your little heart’s content and pantsers - blag it all the way!

The related ability to ignore people, no matter what the topic, is another that we highly recommend to aspiring series authors. In fact, it is a skill that will generally make your life better all around. Most great artists became famous long after they were dead, so it stands to reason if they’d listened to the people telling them how bad they were while they were alive, they would never have persevered until the very end.


Meet the authors

Claire Buss: 'Books and cake.'

Claire Buss is a science fiction, fantasy & contemporary writer based in the UK. She wanted to be Lois Lane when she grew up but work experience at her local paper was eye-opening. Instead, Claire went on to work in a variety of admin roles for over a decade but never felt quite at home. An avid reader, baker and Pinterest addict Claire won second place in the Barking and Dagenham Pen to Print writing competition in 2015 setting her writing career in motion.

You can follow her on Twitter @grashopper2407 and visit her website www.cbvisions.weebly.com for more information about Claire and her writing.

J C Steel: ‘Knives, spaceships, and dirty fighting – who says a mercenary cult can’t be fun?’

Born in Gibraltar and raised on a yacht around the coasts of the Atlantic, I’m a writer, martial artist and introvert. In between the necessary making of money to allow the writing of more books, I can usually be found stowing away on a spaceship, halfway to the further galaxy.

Find out more about the author and the series at jcsteelauthor.com.

Monday 15 January 2018

The Organised Author #3

Today I am sharing some more challenges from the Organised Author event created by my esteemed indie author colleague, Cindy Tomamichel, as part of our Sparkly Badgers Unite indie author writing group on Facebook. The challenges were designed to help you focus on becoming more organised as an author and also act as a handy guide to make sure you haven't forgotten anything crucial to your marketing efforts.

Last time we covered Amazon Author Pages, graphics, Facebook Author Page and Facebook extras. If you missed that post, you can catch up here.

Today I'll be sharing tips on the following:

1. Book Shortlinks
2. Twitter
3. Tweets
4. Google+


Book Shortlinks

The aim of the game is to look professional and great long URLs don't look all that professional. Sure you can bitly your links and make them shorter but you can also create specific book shortlinks. Not only do these look more professional, they can also be set up to take your potential reader to the correct Amazon i.e. UK if they are UK, US if they are the US and so forth. I use Booklinker to create my personalised URLs.

mybook.to/gaiaeffect

mybook.to/suburbia
mybook.to/rosethief


Twitter




Not on Twitter yet? It's worth a look. There is a large indie author community on Twitter and lots of hashtag events you can get involved with. For example, #authorconfessions is run by two indie authors and they pose a daily question getting you to share details about you and your current work-in-progress. This leads to additional followers, similar authors & readers and on occasion, book sales. It does tend to be more of a social site rather than a sales site. The news feed turnover is very fast so it's a good idea to use hashtags to help others see your posts.

I co-host a hashtag event, #sparklybadgersunite, on Monday's at 9pm UK time. We talk about what we're writing, reading and motivate each other for the week ahead. Not sure how to get involved? Read this handy blog post telling you how to join in




Another feature Twitter offers is the chance to pin a tweet to the top of your profile so you can continually promote a book, share a book trailer or run a competition. Here is my Twitter account with personalised header (made in Canva) and current pinned post - @grasshopper2407


Here is a useful article on regular hashtags used by authors. These are some of the ones I use:

#mondaymotivation
#tuespoet
#wednesdaywisdom
#tbt
#fridayreads
#writerslife
#amwriting
#amreading


Tweets

Once you've set your profile up on Twitter, you've got to start tweeting. It is possible to track your Twitter analytics. Click on your profile photo to access the menu, then choose analytics. Now you can see your most popular tweets. It's worth keeping a list of those so you can reuse them in the future, cutting down the amount of time you spend on social media.



Some standard scheduled tweet topics can be blogs, book adverts, review links, interviews, and your contacts like facebook shop, website or Zon page. Having these listed in a word document means they can be easily grabbed and retweeted.


Google+

An attempt by Google to have a similar platform to Facebook and whilst it doesn't have the same user-friendly interface, it does have lots of groups so you can share your stuff with like-minded individuals and posting your blog on here improves it's search engine results meaning more potential readers can find you. You can friend others and share posts, gaining more exposure for yourself which is what it's all about. As always, here is my Google+ account so you can connect with me.






There's plenty more to cover so if you have any questions on what I've mentioned so far, don't hesitate to get in touch and I'll be back with the next instalment soon.

Sunday 7 January 2018

The Organised Author #2

Today I will share some more challenges from the Organised Author event created by my esteemed indie author colleague, Cindy Tomamichel, as part of our Sparkly Badgers Unite indie author writing group on Facebook. The challenges were designed to help you focus on becoming more organised as an author and also act as a handy guide to make sure you haven't forgotten anything crucial to your marketing efforts.

Last time we covered author platform, to do lists & planning, platform focus & author brand and using your author brand focus. If you missed that post, you can catch up here.

Today I'll be sharing tips on the following:
  1. Amazon Author Page
  2. Graphics
  3. Facebook Author Page
  4. Facebook Extras

Amazon Author Page

Here is an example of an author page on Amazon - mine! It includes a photo of me, my author bio with all my links & my books. There is also the opportunity to add videos for example book trailers and you can upload upcoming events. 


There is more than one Amazon so it's important to ensure you create an author page on all of them:


It is also possible to link your amazon.com author page to your blog and add editorial reviews.


Graphics

It has been proven that social media posts with an image are more impactful than those without but where can you easily make graphics for your various platforms? Canva! And where can you get royalty free images? Pixabay! There are of course others out there but these are the ones I use. Here are a couple of examples of the sorts of things you can create.

         



Facebook Author Page

This is an easy one to set up. Facebook allows you to create a business page as well as a personal account. At the bottom of your home page, you will see the words Create and beneath them a series of options, including page. Click on that and then follow the Facebook prompts to create your author page. As always have a look at other authors to see what they've done if you want some hints on how to set up your page to look professional and inviting to others so they will click like. 

Again, here is my author page as an example.


Facebook Extras

Of course, there are extras - it's Facebook!  You can pin a post to the top of your page - something you want everyone to see the moment they visit your page. You can set up your Facebook store and provide easy to click on links to your books. You can upload images & videos, link to your newsletter, Facebook Group, other social media platforms such as Twitter and Pinterest, add a link to your website and run ads (which you have to pay for.)

Explore and make your page your own, remember you don't have to throw the kitchen sink at it just use what works for you.


There's plenty more to cover so if you have any questions on what I've mentioned so far, don't hesitate to get in touch and I'll be back with the next instalment soon.